Data Transfer to Luxembourg

Following Israel, the US and Poland, Luxembourg has now also received copies of data from the archives of the International Tracing Service (ITS) in Bad Arolsen. The recipient institution is the Centre de Documentation et de Recherche sur la Résistance (Documentation and Research Centre on the Resistance) directed by Paul Dostert in Luxembourg. In accordance with a resolution from the International Commission responsible for overseeing the work of ITS all eleven member states are entitled to digital copies of the documents archived in Bad Arolsen.

“We are pleased about the decision of Luxembourg to utilise ITS documents for research in their own country. The files convey a detailed picture of the ramifications of Nazi persecution all across Europe,” said ITS Director Jean-Luc Blondel. Apart from the Luxembourg documentation centre, the Yad Vashem Memorial in Jerusalem, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. and the Institute of National Remembrance in Warsaw are all already working with document scans from the ITS archives.

Up until now around 80 million images and roughly six terabytes of data have been handed over to these institutions, including documents on concentration camps, ghettos and prisons (ca. 18 million images), the ITS central name index (ca. 42 million images), registration cards of displaced persons (ca. 7 million images), and documents concerning forced labour (ca. 13 million images).

The remaining documents on DPs and emigration are presently being scanned. The files of the children’s tracing service as well as the so-called general documents and the correspondence between ITS and victims and their family members will follow. “Digitisation is a top priority for us,” says Blondel. “It opens up perspectives for a fast, free flow of information.”